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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LYRICS. IDYLS 



FRAGMENTS 



/ 

JOSEPH H. ARMSTRONG 



— -®@- — 

" I reap the red tares that I sow not, 
And sow — as I cannot reap."' 

' My heart is but a purple song unsung. 
Save in the pathos of a minor part 
Whose sweeter chords are clogged with aching clay." 

J. H. A. 

-— ®®"— . 

\ 

NEW YORK ^ CiC^%^ A 
THE PUBLISHERS' PRINTING COMPANY 

NOS. I20 AND 122 EaST I4TH STREET 
1892 



HrLy 



Copyright, 1892, 

BY 
A. L. M. GOTTSCHALK. 



I) I. 



0--.<Jj^-s 







INDEX. 



PAGE 

To the Reader, . . . . ' 7 

To J. H. A 13 

Biographical Sketch, I5 

To my Mother ■ • • 19 

Florida — A Fragment, 20 

Song — "Life and True Love meet biit Once," . . .20 

A Martial Ode, 21 

Love in the Market, ........ 21 

Serenade — "Life and I were 111 at Ease," . . .22 

Hamadryads, 23 

Love's Dirge, 24 

Despondence, .......•• 25 

From "Songs of a Pagan." Sewanee, 1889, . . .26 

"Over the White Sea-foam," 26 

"Heaven May be Eternal," 26 

"Sefiorita, Have thine Eyes," 27 

"Love, be thy Lips the Cradle of my Sighs," . . 28 
"My Dream hath Fled, and its Airy Dome," . . 28 
" Lips have Smiled till Smiles were Tears, " . . 29 

To R. B. "Stanch be thy Bark," . . . -so 
"Life's Retribution," . . . . . • -32 

3 



PAGE 

Song — "In a Far Greek Isle, where the Skies were 

Blue," ......... 34 

Kismet, 35 

What is Love? 36 

One Kiss, and then ? — A Sonnet, 37 

Rondel — "A Woman's Eyes ! No Wonder, then," . . 38 

To the Artist, 40 

Sonnet to the Sea 40 

Ode to Anacreon, 41 

Fragments, 42 

Ideal Woman, ......... 42 

False Love, ......... 43 

Messalina, .......... 44 

The Shower, 46 

Storm — Drowning Visions, 47 

Sanity — A Fragment, 49 

Spring — An Impromptu, -So 

To . "I've seen Storms Master Heaven, until She'd 

Weep," 52 

Good-night, 53 

Women and Mice . 54 

Rather Misplaced, 55 

Serenade — "O Music, Tuneful Minister of Love," . . 57 

The Sybarite, 58 

To a Butterfly, 63 

The Legend of the Lotus- flower, 65 

An Answer to a Proposal, 68 

"Moon and Rocks" — A Sonnet 71 

Chant de Nuit — "St. Augustine," 72 

"Ergo Sum" — Lines upon the Sea-shore 74 

The Glow-worm, 77 

4 



Lines for Christmas, iSgo, . 

To a Living Preacher of Infidelity, 

The Unseen Singer, . 

The Suicide, 

Memories — A Study in E Minor, 

Marco Miale, .... 

Timoleon's Love, 

Farewell Verses. To . "Oh! Would that we could 

Pierce the Gloom," ..... 
Appendix. Farewell Address to an old Coatee, 

5 



PAGE 

79 
81 

84 
89 
92 
97 

104 

109 



TO THE READER. 



To edit this little book of verses has been no easy 
task. It soon became evident that an unbiased 
criticism was impossible. There was ever present 
the sympathy of friendship, which either attracted 
unduly or, when checked, became the cause of undue 
severity of judgment. Hence I limited myself to a 
presentation of such poems as seemed likely to claim 
the favor of some reader, though not setting forth all 
that subsists of the fragmentary work of the poet. 
Pieces which it is more than likely that a few addi- 
tional years of life would have cancelled are never- 
theless presented, for the sake of some lines here 
and there, perhaps some stanzas, which must have 
been saved from such a doom, and incorporated 
into poems yet unconceived and now never to be 
conceived. 

Is it the true part of a friend to put immature 
work into the world's show-windows of poetic read- 
ing? Because Kirke White died at twenty-one, shall 

7 



generation after generation be haunted by his gaunt 
ghost of would-be poetry? We pity the fate of an 
ardent student, but we cannot commend, because of 
our sympathy, his lifeless verse. 

Stood the case so, in my opinion, with the work 
of my friend, I should have recommended the de- 
struction of all that he had written, for his own sake 
rather than for the world's. But I believe that no- 
body can read " The Serenade," " Life and I were 
111 at Ease," "Florida," or the rondel "On a Wo- 
man's Eyes," without being attracted, nay, more or 
less fascinated. The light step, the fling and care- 
less pathetic grace bring to mind the songsters of 
cavalier days. 

Then " An Answer to a Proposal " is a piece pos- 
sessing indubitable excellence in its way — that, in 
company with its less reckless but more mutinously 
sweet sister, "Chant do Nuit, " bids fair, unless my 
mind is utterly misled by friendship, to rival, with 
poetic readers, some of the very best poems of the 
kind now extant. 

But apart from such fragrant work as " The 
Shower" and others of the sort, there is lyric work 
of a more serious character, and deserving, I think, 
far higher praise. " The Glow-worm," while Brown- 
ing-haunted, is still his own, and an impressive 
piece of verse. It is compactly done, and reveals 
beauties to a second and third reading. " Ergo 



Sum " is a little masterpiece, and combines serious 
questionings with exquisite loveliness and delicate 
irony. The stanzas " The Unseen Singer" are, of all 
his work, the noblest. As the poet listens to the 
voice and wonders what face, attitude, and glory of 
soul may belong to the singer, he reads the great 
lesson of faith. God is the unseen singer who 
chants in nature, whose sweetest tones ring in the 
heart itself, and, longing to hear more distinctly, to 
catch a glimpse of the unimaginable face, man has 
become what he is — has become God-like. Then the 
painful verses that contrast lethargy of spirit with 
peace, ending in a pious breathing of adoring praise ! 
Such a lyric is not the product of a rhymer, of an 
immature heart and brain, but is an artist's — a true 
poet's child. 

Among the lyrics is a fragment entitled " Sanity." 
This piece of close-knit blank verse will be found 
repeated, in somewhat altered form, in the body of 
one of the tales. It was found in this separate form, 
and since in this separateness it speaks more person- 
ally, it appears where it does, as well as in the 
"Suicide." 

To draw attention to the fact that Mr. Armstrong 
was a writer according to two entirely different 
methods may serve to explain the inspirationalism 
evident in many of his lyrics, and the careful medi- 
tated style of other samples of his workmanship. If 



"Timoleon's Love," for instance, had no further 
merit than its self-restrained manner and its excel- 
lently developed metaphors, which are, after the ex- 
ample of Elizabethan dramatists, worked out into 
detail, it would, in my opinion, deserve publication, 

... "As the sun went down, 
Stripping of all their purple uniform 
His soldiery of clouds, until they looked 
Quite woe-begone, like self-stung renegades 
That had gone over to advancing night," 

is a fair example of his metaphors wrought into per- 
fectness. 

The idyls and tales speak for themselves. " Marco 
Miale " was found in a very disordered form. It was 
only after great pains that the thread of narrative 
was traced through the many fragments which were 
afterward arranged so as to produce the apparently 
intended effect; the poem had really never been 
written. Notes, as it were, had been jotted down 
at odd moments, some in pencil, some in ink; now 
overlapping in subject, now almost contradictory. 
For the arrangement of the poem, such as it is, the 
editor is responsible. Whatever is good belongs to 
the poet, whatever is marred must be set down to 
the ill judgment of his friend. 

"Memories, a Study in E Minor," is an attractive 
poem, the suggestive sweetness and passion of which 
may possibly escape the reader at the firs^" perusal. 



It seems to iiie in some respects an example of his 
most finished work. 

To be sure, like all young poets he was under the 
spell of master-singers, and echoes mingle with his 
own voice. And now all that remains to be done is 
to draw the reader's attention to the prontmciation 
of words like " trifling " and " rippling " in three 
syllables, " spiritual" in two, and such words as 
" heaven, " " rhythm, " " chasm, " " flower, " " fire, " and 
" hour " as dissyllables. 

It is hoped that this little volume may add a few 
fragrant blossoms to the Southern nosegay, and in 
some measure win for the unfortunate poet the rec- 
ognition he dreamed of, as the well-earned crown 
of future work which weakness, disease, and death 
forbade. 

Norman de Lagutry. 
II 



TO J. H. A. 

r\EAR fellow-wanderer through enchanted days, 

How the moon shone ! 
Dear fellow-chooser of unbeaten ways, 

Were the flowers sweet? 
Dear fellow-seeker after glories strange, 

Was thy face thin and wan? 
Ah ! We are struggling thro' great seas of change, 

And thou art set beyond all hope's defeat! 

Nay, we can weep for what is lost alone. 

But thou art near — 
More near than ere from earth thy soul had flown 

To sunlit hills. 
For where I am, thither I summon up 

Thy spirit from its sphere ; 
Thy hand holds to my lips a golden cup, 

Whose sunny draught all ache of yearning stills. 

Thou knowest all — I need to tell thee naught — 

Thou knowest all. 
Nor are we broken-hearted. Thou hast taught 

To heed the call 
Of spirit voices, and they cheer us on 

To look for higher things ; 
The past was fair — but see the future's dawn ! 

And joy can reach it on his passion-wings. 

N. DE L. 

13 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



JOSEPH H. ARMSTRONG, the son of Richard 
F. Armstrong and grandson of the late Gen. 
James W. Armstrong, of Macon, Ga. , was born in 
Halifax, N. S., on the nineteenth of September, 1867. 
An inherited delicacy of constitution, however, neces- 
sitated his removal to a warmer climate, and being 
of Southern parentage, he quickly and naturally iden- 
tified himself with the people among whom the tra- 
ditions of his family lay. Being debarred by fre- 
quent illnesses from participating in the rougher 
sports of boyhood, as well as from undertaking the 
irksome tasks of the school-room, his education pro- 
ceeded in the desultory fashion natural where a 
quick and inquiring mind is left unrestrained in its 
pursuits; and in the ardor of study his tasks and his 
pleasures became often identical. 

It was not until his eighteenth year that it was 
thought practicable to subject him to the demands 
and restrictions of a fixed course of study, the many 
advantages offered by the University of the South 

15 



first suggesting such a possibility. At that institu- 
tion he accordingly remained for three years — the 
value of which, in mental and physical training, as 
well as in that contact and association which is so 
needful a preparation for entrance upon active life, 
he fully and justly appreciated; while an entry in 
his journal at this time expresses the poignant regret 
with which the ties there formed were severed. 

In the summer of 1889 he visited Halifax for a brief 
period, soon finding it imperative to return to the 
milder Southern air. Even in that favorable cli- 
mate, however, an attack of la grippe developed 
the disease against which he had so long been 
guarded ; and one more summer brought to its close 
the brief story of his life, his strength barely suffic- 
ing for a return to that land whose soft airs had so 
often restored him to comparative health. The 
winter of 1890-91 proved singularly unfavorable, 
provoking the lines entitled ''Florida," the loving 
mockery of which is in one of his characteristic 
veins, and in which the pen falls from the weak 
hand in most pathetic confirmation of the arraign- 
ment. 

St. Augustine had been always his best-loved 

home, with its relics of an older time, its vague 

associations of history and romance, its charm of sea 

and sky, and its free and informal yet refined social 

life; and it was in this chosen spot that, in January, 

16 



1 89 1, after a month in which the patient and brave 
spirit seemed alone to sustain the sinking body, he 
passed away, retaining to the last conscious moment 
the vivacity and clearness of intellect which were 
characteristic of him. 

As a student his love of poetry transcended all 
others, and though tempted by an ardent and some- 
what mercurial temperament to try many depart- 
ments of art, he ever returned to the old love ; and 
his ambition, conceived at an age when few boys 
look beyond the play-ground, was ever for achieve- 
ment in that field. His style, as is natural in youth, 
was much influenced by his enthusiasm for certain 
writers, though unconsciously so — Keats, perhaps, 
having made the earliest and hence the deepest 
impression ; the hardening of fibre and assertion 
of individuality having just begun to be evident in 
his latest work. 

In the restlessness of an ardent and aspiring mind, 
impatient of commonplace formulas, fascinated at 
times by the specious philosophies of the day, yet 
never satisfied with their conclusions, he struggled 
onward toward the light, finding a vantage-ground 
in that higher pantheism which seems not to be in- 
compatible with the truth revealed to us. In "The 
Glow-worm" is a touch of this belief, and in his last 
verses, "The Unseen Singer," is shadowed the con- 
flict which had at last reached its peaceful result. 
2 17 



To remind his friends, for whom this volume is 
primarily intended, of his many companionable 
qualities, of the keen and ready wit, the quaint 
humor, and the fine insight, would perhaps be need- 
less, while to the sympathetic much of this will be 
discernible in his writings. 

It is but just to remind the reader that the author 
of this book had lived but little over twenty-three 
years; that almost all was written before even that 
age had been attained, and that the greater part, 
written in m.oments of depression, in the weariness 
of sleepless nights, and often in the intervals of 
suffering, was thrown aside in the impatience of 
severe self-criticism, either to be destroyed or to 
await, for revisal, a future day of calmer judgment 
and maturer culture — a day to which all serious and 
sustained work was hopefully postponed, but which, 
alas! was never to be. 

i8 



TO MY MOTHER. 

THOUGH I be cast a plaything on the shore 
Of bleak despair by some wild storm of doubt, 
Or stand upon time's pinnacle and shout 
The battle-cry of truth amid the roar 
Of damning multitudes ; though curses pour 
Their blasting breath upon mine head, and flout 
This ragged carcass ; though dim spectres rout 
The creed of my soul's soul, and to the core 
Of my faint heart drive back its frenzied tide ; — 
Yet the faint music of my last sweet breath 
Shall voice my tears, and like an anthem glide 
Above the surging threnody of death. 
Till thy dear name my restful lips have sighed, 
And my heart die even while it listeneth. 

!88. 

19 



FLORIDA. 

BY the stars that circle there 
In and out amid the mist, 
By the chill moon's stare, 

And the sea moon-kissed, 
Florida, my Italy, 
What a fool you've made of me! 

Drowsing sun-steeped by the sea, 
This is how I've found thee waiting 



January, 1891. 



SONG. 



LIFE and true love meet but once, 
And though too oft they drift apart, 
Yet death alone can fill the void 

Where Love once nestled in the heart. 

And lips may smile on sleeping woe, 

And eyes may sparkle throiigh their tears, 

Yet who like Memory's self can know 
The phantoms of forgotten years? 



A MARTIAL ODE. 

"''"T^O arms! To arms!" respondent throats 
1 Give back the soul-inspiring notes, 

Save mine, which breathes a sigh ; 
A thousand gleaming falchions shine, 
And every lip cries " On!" save mine, 

Which first must say, "Good-by. " 

" To arms ! To arms !" The cohorts stand, 
A countless host, a gallant band, 

A stanch and dauntless line ; 
" To arms!" each man must win or die — 
" To arms!" and to their arms they fly, 

And I— I fly to thine! 



LOVE IN THE MARKET. 

TRIOLET. 

THE kiss she threw to Jack, 
Which I chanced by and caught? 
'Tis true I gave her back 
The kiss she threw to Jack — 
Yet was a thief, alack ! 

In stealing what he bought — 
The kiss she threw to Jack 

Which I chanced by and caught! 



SERENADE. 

LIFE and I were ill at ease: 
When we were each alone, love, 
Time became a slow disease 
With nothing to atone, love. 

For the weary hours that pass 
As slowly as a prayer, love, 

When the dark cathedral glass 
Stains the outer air, love! 

Life and I were friends in name 
Till Life led me to you, love. 

And then I saw I was to blame, 
And Life was always true, love ! 



HAMADRYADS. 

YE of oak and beechen shades, 
Tender music of the wood, 
White of brow, with massy braids 
Coifing gentle virginhood. 

Have the cogs and wheels of time 
Dinned upon your coral ears, 

With the halting, hum-drum rhyme 
Of these last prosaic years? 

Have they tainted that elysian 
Peace and joy ye knew of yore? 

Have our eyes imperfect vision. 
That ye are with us no more? 

Hamadryads, chaste and coy. 

Ye are still the same, and we, 

Mixed and mingled with alloy. 

See not all there is to see ! 
23 



LOVE'S DIRGE. 

WANDERING night-winds passed us, laded 
With the breath of violets; 
Mellow moonlight dumbly faded 

Where the water frets 
In the wake of tuneful oar, 
Like a sighing paramour. 

Dripping, dripping 
Like the tripping 
Music of sweet castanets. 

My pale lips on hers had rested 

In the calm of dying pain, 
And her sweeping lashes jested 

With a tear or twain ; 
Still I see the fading vision 
Like a smile of sharp derision, 
When one, sleeping. 
Wakes in weeping, 
With the dull-remembered pain. 

For I left her, where yon willow 

Drooped and drowsed athwart the stream. 

With the rushes for her pillow 
Curtained with a dream. 



Yet I cannot but remember 

Life's fair June in life's December, 

When no laughter 

Lingers after 
All that was, and is, a dream ! 



DESPONDENCE. 

FOR the love of a blossom that blew not, 
But paled in the fire of a kiss ; 
In the kissing of lips that I knew not 
The pain of God's wrath I will rue not 
After the ceasing of this ! 

In the pang of a pain that I know not, 

And tears that I cannot weep 
In the paying a debt that I owe not, 
I reap the red tares that I sow not 

And sow — as I cannot reap ! 



25 



FROM "SONGS OF A PAGAN.' 

OVER the white sea-foam, 
Into the starlit morn, 
Like music through the dome 
That roofs the panting dawn; 

Over the dewy hills. 

Into the silent night, 
Brushing the daffodils 

In that melodious flight — 

Life and Love are fled 

Away on the wild wind's breath, 
And they make their bridal bed 

On the blossoming robe of death. 

SEWANEE, l88y. 



HEAVEN may be eternal. 
But it hath no joys for me; 
Nor the fire of sunset vernal. 

Nor the paean of the sea, 
Nor the whisper of the ocean 

When time is lost in dreaming, 
Nor its scintillating motion 

When the dawn is faintly gleaming. 
26 



I have them all, and love them ; 

And when my spirit dies, 
May it vanish, and be of them, 

And they its Paradise ! 



SEf^ORITA, have thine eyes 
No soft glance of love for me, 
Nor the music of thy sighs 
Aught that answers mine for thee? 

Have thy lips no tender moods 

When they know not what they miss- 
When a breaking smile intrudes 
And a smile becomes a kiss? 

Seiiorita, fare thee well ! 

*' Yo te amo," I would say, 
But thy bright eyes look my knell, 

And thy sweet lips say me nay ! 
27 



LOVE, be thy lips the cradle of my sighs, 
Mingling their fragrance with thy sentient 
breath, 
Till they are born again in melodies 
And orisons of love, cast at the feet of death. 

Love, be thy heart the registry of mine. 
Whose tear-stained tablets may unopened lie. 

Until my soul hath bid adieu to thine, 
And all things fade save those which cannot die. 



MY dream hath fled, and its airy dome 
Hath crumbled into dust, and I, 
Like a desolate bird without a home, 
Ask but a spot in which to die. 

The holiest shrine of holy love, 

The joy existence held for me, 

The light of the stars that smile above, 

My spirit found in thine and thee ! 
28 



LIPS have smiled till smiles were tears, 
And eyes have oft grown passing blue, 
Yet breathed no echo from the heart — 
No echo true. 

And oft the dewy breath of love 
To passion's heavy utterance grew, 

Yet never hath my thirsty heart 
Drunk echoes true. 

Ye winds asleep upon the sea, 
Oh ! wake ye in a howling crew. 

And thunder to the skies a curse 
That 7nay be true! 

SEWANEE, 1880. 

29 



TO R. B. 

STANCH be thy bark 
When the skies are dark 
And the storm's wild wings are tree, 
And the billows leap 
Where the still sands sleep 
On the margin of the sea! 
And ere we part, 
From a heavier heart 
Here's a health to thy heart and thee ! 

Fair be thy dreams. 

When waking seems 
To live again in sleep, 

And thine eyes smile o'er 

A fairer shore 
Than that shore on which men weep ! 

So the purple sea 

Of this health to thee 
Be deep as my heart is deep! 
30 



Life is but brief, 

And time is a thief, 
And death hath a master-key 

To free the soul 

When the jailer's bowl 
Is red with revelry ; 

May thine be true ! 

With a last adieu 
And a health from my heart to thee'. 



Sewanee, 



LIFE'S RETRIBUTION. 

SORROW'S solution 
Ends with the tombl 
Vaunting ambition — 
Vain is its mission, 
Lost in the gloom 
Of humanity's doom! 
Though we may sigh for it> 
Though our hearts die for it, 
All is in vain ! 
However we merit, 
Others inherit 
All but the pain 
Of that dreary refrain 
Of failing again ! 
Cease, cease your weeping '. 
In the still keeping 
Of death's chilly eye: 
I see a light leaping 
In the dull sleeping 
Of that which must die, 
32 



And, in its purity, 
Scorning death's docm! 
'Tis the bright surety 
Of that futurity- 
Life's retribution, 
Sorrow's solution, 
Surviving pollution 
Born of the tomb ! 
33 



SONG. 

[From "Messalina, " an unfinished drama.] 

IN a far Greek isle, where the skies were blue, 
And the music of the sea 
Haunted the sands where the seaweed grew, 
Died in the clouds where the sea-gulls flew, 
And the sun sank wondrously; 

In a far Greek isle a little Greek maid 

Walked on the sands by the sea. 
Haunted the sands where the seaweed grew. 
Gazed into heaven where the sea-gulls flew, 

And the sun sank wondrously. 

And the tyrant Cleon saw her there 

With her eyes as deep as the sea, 
And the looped-up gold of her circled hair. 
And the marblehood of her shoulders, bare 

In the hardihood of sanctity. 

And he said, " My child, to be loved of one 

Like thou art, here by the sea. 
Would well repay what a god had done 
In the sweat of years o'er the wheels of the sun, 

In a nightless eternity!" 
34 



KISMET. 

I SAW her blue eyes quiver 
In the rushes and reeds of time, 
Like a naiad's in a river 

Where the hollow waters chime, 
Tolled by the winds of even ; 

But, oh ! she paled and fled — 
And the light may be in heaven. 
But the lamp is with the dead! 

'Twas music hung about her 

And lingered where she trod ; 
And Love could do without her 

As faith without a God! 
A bud fast shut with showers, 

A wreck of April green. 
That dies among the flowers 

To show what should have been. 

Her lips were like the water, 

Both passing fair and chill, 
As if the sunlight caught her 

And kissed against her will ; 
Her tongue was lightly laden, 

Her life itself a jest! 
The grave hath won the maiden, 

And the daisies tell the rest. 

Halifax, 1889. 

35 



WHAT IS LOVE? 



TO 



HA! what is love? What more than this- 
A pain of soul, an ache of heart; 
A sickness of the God in man, 
A starving on the Judas kiss 
Of flesh and flesh, more bitter than 
A poison having no sweet part? 
This pain of soul, this ache of heart! 
And where was " love" before the soul 
Began to knead the well-fit clay? 
When Socrates found life to be 
The generous path of self-control. 
That neither throws God's gifts away 
Nor turns them into revelry? 



36 



ONE KISS, AND THEN? 

A SONNET. 

ONE kiss, and then, like parting wreaths of mist 
That hang in love's red sunset, we grew cold; 
And the last blush of passion-purpled gold 
Fell palpitating into amethyst. 

One kiss, and oh ! the lips that mine have kissed 
Forget, though not forgotten. Shadows fold 
Mine own, and old sweet tales that hers had told 

Are but harmonious words without a gist. 

Oh! where shall we hang in life's wide eterne. 
When love's white sunrise drives the night away? 

What other words upon my lips will bum? 
What other light in her blue eyes will play? 

Soft! I have seen a beacon-light afar: 

In life's chill night that kiss, love, is a star. 

37 



RONDEL. 

[A reply to verses in Harper'' s Magasme, October, 1887.] 

A SOLUTION. 

"What Browning meant, the maiden fair 
Besought of me in wild despair 

As, seated in a grassy nook, 

We pondered o'er the mystic book 
To find the secret written there. 

O'erhead the squirrels debonair 
Made merry in their leafy lair ; 
Enjoying life, no thought they took " 
What Browning meant, 

And seemed to say, " You foolish pair, 
Be wise, and mystery forswear ; 

Be gay as Doris with her crook 

And Corydon." Then did I look 
Up to her eyes, and ceased to care 
What Browning meant. 

AWOMAN'vS eyes! No wonder, then, 
His Browning was forgotten when 
The all outside of Paradise, 
Unfathomed still by marvelling men, 

Shone down tipon him — Browning-wise — 
A woman's eyes! 

38- 



For man, poor wretch, ma}^ search and, solve 
The rhyme in which the stars revolve, 

Where fire-tracked comets sink and rise, 
The liquid spells where gems dissolve. 

Save those whose flash disarms surmise — 

A woman's eyes! 

And yet, perhaps, the wise youth saw 
What you have guessed not, for one law 

Holds good of things in mystic guise. 
" What Browning meant" he found there, for 

All poets they epitomize — 

A woman's eyes! 

39 



TO THE ARTIST. 

BE silent, emulate the lips of time, 
Upon which silence broods with folded wing- 
Until it dies within the mighty rush 
Of the swift music of triumphant love. 
Which bursts upon the world and cries, " Success!" 



vSONNET TO THE SEA. 

FOREVER art thou gazing on the sky, 
Forever echoing the stars that pass 
Above thee ; now as calm thou art as grass 
Ruffled somewhat by spring winds as they fly 

Upon flower-robbing wings — and now, the sigh 
Of north-brewed revolution breathes, alas! 
Faints on thy bosom, while a huddled mass 

Of thunder-mist is full of ruin's cry. 

Yon fern-robed mountain-peak is child of Time, 
And sinks into the dust we sink into, 
The butt of winds in winter's grizzled cope; 
Only thine own eternal ebb and flow 
Is one, with many changes, like a rhyme 
Of many miseries bound about one hope. 
40 



c 



ODE TO ANACREON. 

HORISTER of love and wine, 
Sweet-tongued rival of the nine, 
A double meed of joy be thine! 

Where'er thy sprite hath sought its rest 

In the vineyards of the blest, 
Where the leaves are spun of mist. 
Trembling o'er the amethyst 

Of bloomy fruit, whose clustered store 

Stains thy silent lips no more — 
Revelry and joy be thine! 

Not the revelry of earth, 
Where eyes are bright, and hearts repine. 

And woe is cloaked with shrinking mirth; 
No such love as fills the heart 

With echoes of what might have been. 
Laughing when sweet thoughts depart 

And despair hath entered in ; 
But the joy and revelry 
Which, like buds that blow and die, 

Pales with time and waxeth less 

To bear the seed of perfectness ! 
Chorister of wine and love, 
Such be thine abode above! 
Spring, 1889. 



FRAGMENTS. 



IDEAL WOMAN. 



THE possible of woman is to be 
The span of God that compasseth mankind; 
The morning of man's east; the golden brew 
Of dreams that night drinks, in the quiet west; 
The horizon of life's tired mariners; 
The verge which hides God from us, and in hiding 
Proves him as yonder limits prove the great 
World's symmetry, as music proves that death, 
Being hushed, is not the end of things that die, 
For silence ends in music ! . . . 
42 



FALSE LOVE. 



SO seize we on the fairest flesh of them, 
Breathing, in passion's primal mightiness, 
Our own souls into their transparent clay ; 
Worshipping fires that we have blown to life 
In our abundance. Then comes weariness, 
And we sleep for a time — dream pleasantly — 
And feel a swift returning flush of life, 
Which is the welcome of our exiled spirit, 
Playing no more the part of perfume in 
An odorless bud. 

. . . The weight 
And mental bulk of such far-reaching pain. 
Less than the hungry gauntness of slow death 
That science wrings from wasting maladies, 
Laughs at stiff-fingered dogmas and rough creeds 
That honor sin with masculinity ; 
Sin, the hermaphrodite, the double-edged, 
The lesser poisoned, and out-edging death 
With the false glitter of fair legends writ 
Upon an air-keen blade that leaves the imprint 
Of man's nobility on the heart's red core. 
43 



MESSALINA. 

[Fragment of a drama.] 

A WOMAN void of better principle, 
Given quite over to all devilish things, 
Cimmerian-souled, and most unpitying; 
Merciless, fierce, destructive, murderous, 
I know this woman in my soul to be ; 
And yet she breathes so sweet an atmosphere, 
Full of unspecified rich possibles; 
An inarticulate witchery of music. 
Whose influence generates all beautiful dreams — 
Sweet, rare conceptions in regard to her ; 
And she doth so subject, adopt, and take 
A seeming whiteness, purity, innocence, 
The tyrannous sovereignty of our better selves, 
That perjury is dear-bought martyrdom, 
Guilt but a clash of circumstance, and life 
But clay-sphered adoration ! Is it so? 
And yet — ah, God ! — a glory of brief flesh — 
Beautiful — beautiful ! God, how beautiful ! 
Foul — foul ! mark, Atticus, I name her foul — 
Devilish! mark, I call her devilish; 

44 



But, in her vileness, not a thing apart, 
A food for controversy, in the touch 
Of sexless speculation to be viewed. 
As a green-fleshed, glue-eyed astronomer 
Watches the ruin of a pleiad, hung 
In the constellated chart of God! Me? me! 
And if I feel her eyes' warm influence 
Fall on me like a rare intoxicant, 
Shall I then pause — pause — pause, perchance to fix 
The date of their eclipse? to calculate 
The durance of their glory? Oh! I am 
No saint, as thou art ; nor is my heart bound 
By tasks, or narrow functions of the flesh, 
But, Samson-like, will cease to grind the mill, 
Pulling the roof down on good resolution! 
Strong am I in my weakness, as the sea, 
Swayed — shaped into unconquerable ebb 
And flow by the cold beckonings of the moon. 
Pity, my Atticus ! Condemn me not. 

45 



THE vSHOWER. 

THE spattered gold of the sky is marred 
By a cloud in the zenith ; and the flowers 
Are pale and dumb, and stand on guard 
To brave the wrath of summer showers, 
Falling like fiercer music in 
A dome of silence and of sin. 

The sea is red with molten gold ; 

But, ripple by ripple, the pallor creeps. 
Till back on its white heart day is rolled 
And the world and the water sleeps. 
And I — lie dumb among the flowers, 
Thinking of life and its summer showers. 

A flutter of chill wind passes first, 
A tongueless calm comes after it ; 

Then a big drop, in some sky-cup nursed 
Till it overflowed its frothy pit, 
Falls on a violet close by me, 

And the blue bud weeps in an ecstasy! 

46 



STORM. 

drowning; visions. 

IN a ruin of gold 
The sky grew cold, 
And the waters were leaden gray ; 
And the spray, 
Like a plume 
In a spent night's gloom, 
Glared white against the day. 
And the sea-gulls' scream, 
And the ghostly gleam 
Of each wing, and its far faint whirr, - 
On my heart they fell 
Like the name of Hell 
On the heart of a murderer! 
And the swash — swish — swash 
Of the frozen wash 
When the helm lay hard-a-lee ! 
The whimpering wail 
Of the beaten sail — 
They palsied the heart of me! 
And I begged a prayer 
From dumb Despair — 
Such things her lips disburse, 
But she cheated me then, 
47 



For I cried " Amen" ! 

To a cold heart-withering curse. 

Then it came to pass 

That the calm of grass, 

Knee-deep and daisy-starred, 

Ruffled and riven 

By the winds of heaven, 

Where the full moon stands on guard, 

Fell on the sea — 

Fell down on me, 

And I shut my weary eyes: 

And there came a dream — 

And I rocked on the stream 

That flows through Paradise! 

Now I heard sweet bells, 
'Twas the boat on the shells 
That lie on the white still shore — 
Then the curlew's call 
Burst through it all. 
And I rose, and dreamed no more ! 
But the gist of the whole 
Is — the calm of soul 
God gives to a man in dread; 
For the truth was, ten 
Of the coast-guard men 
Swore an oath that I was dead! 
48 



SANITY. 

A FRAGMENT. 

I TOO am mad, 
If madness is to think athwart the times! 
To build one's temporal environments 
Of timeless meditation, and to pass 
To old age in no age! Men come and go 
And know not what they are, nor whence they come. 
But measure life by suns and moons and stars, 
To fix themselves, and individualize 
Their little epoch ! Those of finer stuff, 
Men who construct a personality 
Of light and thought and spirit, men who build 
Upon this base and pedestal of clay 
The shadow of their own divinity : 
The lightning-like vitality of these 
Out-wrestles death, and passes on, and fills 
The ragged speculations of their day 
With a clear deathless pulse that thrills forever! 
4 49 



SPRING. 



AN IMPROMPTU. 



O SPRING, sweet solacer of wintry woes; 
Brewer of perfumes, odors crystalline, 
And golden essences, that through the air 
Temper the winds, and gather in the buds, 
Close-petalled from the oblivion of night, 
To part their love-locked lips, and give them tongues 
To whisper to their dewy paramours ; — 
Young Spring, fair Spring, sweet neophyte of time. 
That knows not pale satiety, but still 
With self-suffused glory, doth defy 
The biting inroads of hot summer-winds, 
And stays the sun's swift perpendicular beams 
From earth's yet tender cheek; young Spring, fare- 
well, 
For I am doomed an exile from thy realms, 
Like weeping Naso from Caesarean smiles. 
To dare the bitterness of Tomi's coast. 
And pen meek madrigals to bear my tears. 
And ease the heart of its superfluous load 

50 



Of icy agony. Yet still, oh! still 

Linger upon my recollecting lips 

In all the kissing whispers of thy joy; 

Robbing the base thief, Time, of his delights, 

And making memory an Eden, where 

The hope of better things doth still indorse 

The echo of good things now passed away! 

Thomasville, April, 1889. 

51 



TO . 

I'VE seen storms master Heaven, until she'd weep! 
So doth thine anger master thy calm eyes. 
I've seen the fluttering gold of morning sweep 
The dull dome and the sea; 

But when sweet thoughts with all their alchemies 
Leave those depths clear to me, 
I have no longer any metaphor 
To match them with ; so, tranced evermore, 
I gaze at thee and dream of Paradise ! 

I've seen the full waves plumed with pallid foam, — 

So are thy lips, when anger sits on them. 
I've seen a sudden shower fall slant, and comb 
The white spray into quietness, gem by gem ; 
And so my song to thee 
"Would fall into a dream upon thine ear. 
Mount time's slow wheels — a swifter charioteer 
Than thine ill thought of me ! 

Tell me to rest my head upon thy knee ! 

I have no more to tell thee — all is told. 

I would mine earthliness were deathless gold 
For thee to mint joy out of! Yet, perchance 

The thoughts of mine that dwell on my heart's all — 
That all which thou art — transmute what is me. 
And goldener than morning's stout advance 

Upon night's camp, my soul shall win, or fall ! 
52 



GOOD-NIGHT. 

GOOD-NIGHT ! though we be parted quite 
And you forget, and I defy, 
Oh! still, when night hath robbed the sight 
Of things that make sweet memories sigh, 
Still dream that I am standing by. 
As though affection could not die: 
Still dream that I have said good-night. 

Good-night! though true love waxeth chill, 
Yet there is still a fragrance there 

Whose sweetness time may never kill ; 
A smile of Love's despair 

That Cometh yet, and ever will. 

And so, though dead, 'tis love's sweet right 
To be forever fair — 

And bridge the years with that "good-night." 
53 



WOMEN AND MICE.* 

WHAT woman's not a paradox past all believ- 
ing? 
Built up of smiles and tears, of sky and sod! 
In eVery act the thing of all things past conceiving, 
A stumbling-block — a link 'twixt man and God! 

K perfect woman? Bah ! give me well-alloyed metal. 

Perfection is, in most, perfection's bane! 
Shall I explore a queen-rose, petal by sweet petal? 

A worm? What is a joy worth without pain? 

The touch of music when you ring new-minted treas- 
ure 

Hath half its sweetness of the baser birth ! 
There is no deep of stars too deep for man to measure 

Because he stands upon the sky-scorned earth. 

*The above lines were suggested by a discussion as to the fear of 
mice to which otherwise courageous women are liable, and the poem 
not having been completed, an explanation of the apparently whimsical 
title seems necessary. 

'!4 



RATHER MISPLACED. 

AH ! what was that tune your tongue ran in? 
That sobbing and palpitant strain — 
Like the smell of dead buds, to a man in 

The chill of November's disdain? 
I will hold that ubiquitous fan in 
My hand, while you sing it again. 

For anything so unexpected, 

Without any " wherefore" or " why," 

Too frail to be rudely dissected, 
Sufficiently lovely to die. 

Though it fade and is gone undetected, 
Leaves a void, which we fill with a sigh. 

Oh! why should some classical German 
Play the master in music, and curb 

Every melody into a sermon? 
What a pity those critics disturb 

The sweet hush between acts, to afBrm, on 
Their honor, the thing is superb! 
55 



And that song- you sang", who could look on it 

As too sentimental or slow? 
Preferring sonata or sonnet 

To the tender and tremulous flow 
Of that perfume in tone? Out upon it, 

That critics should criticise so! 

What? You don't mean to say you've been singing 
An air from Tannhauser — that flight 

Of sweet quavers and semitones, ringing 
The changes on some underlight 

Of emotion and feeling? Well, bringing 
The thing to a climax — Good-night ! 

THOMASVILLE, Ga. 

56 



SERENADE. 

O MUSIC, tuneful minister of love, 
Heal the dumb apathy of patient sleep, 
And bid her eyelids swell with dreams, and part 
Like the famed shell that shuts the modest pearl 
From avaricious eyes ; bid each pale pearl 
Mirror the one who'd wear them on his heart; 
Rape her cool lips of honeyed whisperings, 
And lay them on the altar of mine ears, 
Deaf to all other offerings ! Oh ! glide. 
Obsequious music, carpeting thy feet 
Upon the breathing silence of the night; 
Yet wake her not, but seek some oracle, 
Inquiry make of drowsiness and dreams. 
What thought it was that came, the last sweet guest 
Of that large host, her charitable heart; 
Lest even I, or but the thought of me. 
Made music in that hallowed atmosphere. 
Mayhap sat on her eyes when they were lost 
In Lethe . . . even I might be 
The ghost of that which ushered in her dream! 

57 



THE SYBARITE. 

"The Sybarite affirmed that he could not sleep for lying 
upon a ruffled rose-leaf. " 

GLANCED once from the chambers of delight, 
Through the broad casement that was builded 
there 
By drowsy thought, upon a summer's night, 

When fragrance hung too fragrant on the air ; 
I gazed between the curtains that hung low, 
And woven were of rare and dreamy things 
That come and go, 
Like dust of sweet dead flowers that night winds blow 
Into the eyes of sated slumberings. 

I saw the weary moon recline athwart 

A cloud of summer's getting, and she gazed 
In the arcana of mine eyes, methought. 

Till they grew purple-shot, and diinly glazed 
Like windows of dull stained and time-cracked glass; 

And oft the music of a nameless tongue 
That sang "Alas!" 
Did pass about mine ears, and then repass. 

All meaningless, like singings over-sung. 
58 



And then her bosom's hot caress did melt 

Her cloudy couch into a weeping rain 
That veiled her from mine eyes ; though yet they felt 

That nameless incantation, and the pain 
Of something lost, or fading, yet half-seen. 

Some song half-heard, that sinks upon its wings: 
Some wreck of green 
That would have been a blossom, had it been 

A thing that could defy its prisonings. 

I lay where many roses, plucked apart, 

Tremored knee-deep upon the marble floor, 
Amid unfettered melodies that dart 

Through all things fair ; and, as the long night wore 
Her bosom into paly dawn with dreams, 

The moon still held me in that thrall of mist, 
With lampless gleams 
Of shuttered eyes — more fair than fancy deems, — 

And lips that part with kisses yet unkissed. 

Then summoned I a youth, amid the throng 

Of liveried ministers that idle were, 
And bade him take a lute and lip a song, 

And bugle me a fretted war with care ; 
And he upon the borders of my bed 

Sank into music's attitude, and then 
Attuned and fed 
My spirit with sweet nourishment — blood, bled 

From wounds the world had made, and kissed again. 
59 



And lo ! his pale brow sank upon the strings, 

And snapped them with the moisture of a sigh; 
And faintly came again the stir of wings, 

Filled with the pain of things that cannot die 
And yet are not forgotten — still unsought, 

Unsated still with weird wandering, 
All music-fraught, 
Beside the awful Acheron of thought, 

Upon the bleak sad shore of pondering. 

And far within a sky of fancy's make 

I felt an unseen moon, amid the mist 
That shook with inner radiance, as shake 

Hot lips that long to kiss and to be kissed; 
And I was lost with seeking her, and dank 

With heavy dew that weighed upon mine head; 
And my lips drank 
The vaporous springs of many a mouldy bank 

From whose white shine the weary tempests fed. 

And when I wept, my tears were changed to clouds 
That clave unto mine eyes, and there o'erhung 

Their nakedness, as prayerful pity shrouds 
The pain upon dead lips that have been stung 

By what they kissed, yet kiss again and die. 
Mine ears were full of half-heard eloquence. 
Yet knew nor why. 

Nor whence had come that sweet thin melody, 

But fed upon the song, without the sense. 
60 



And then the mist in which I beat my wings 

Gave chilly birth unto a summer rain, 
And I sank with it, as one sinks and sings, 

Whose tongue hath clean forgot his heart's refrain 
Nor will remain its aching confidant, 

But sets upon a journey of its own ; 
Mad ministrant 
Of blasphemy, and sighs that inly pant 

From lips whose music is a monotone. 

Ah me! I lay again by him who slept 

Upon his lute in luted slumberings: 
And through the curtains came the dawn, and wept 

To see the sum of my vain numberings. 
Upon whose many strings no note might pass 

Save the swift climax of a dumb despair 
That sang "Alas!" 
The sad sweet tinkle of an empty glass 

Whose wine is spilt upon the sands of care. 

Then I among the ruined roses found 

One petal which had paled beneath my heart, 

All folded length-and-crosswise, and even bound 
With frost-frayed edges, and I said, " Thou art 

Well slumberless, for this shut flower hath bruised 
Thine ease into a thing of garnered sighs. 
And so, misused. 

Thy heart begot rebellion, and refused 

To harbor Lethe when she sought thine eyes." 
6i 



'Twas that and only that! I will it so: 

Great things may come of small, and dreams may 
brood 
From ruffled love-locks. Be it joy or woe, 

'Tis but the subtle flavor of their food — 
Their food, the heart — and mine was nourishment 

Ill-lipped for joy, who bade his brother woe 
Eat discontent. 
And fatten upon dreams, until he blent 

With all sweet things that come, and coming, go! 

Macon, Ga., January 30, 1889. 

62 



TO A BUTTERFLY. 

BRIGHT pensioner of wormy servitude, 
Freed from thy thrall of silken cerement, 
As though a dirge, in some sweet interlude. 

Had burst into melodious merriment; 
Thou smile upon the sullen lips of time, 

Thine is a part 
Too brief in Earth's long farce for laggard rhyme 
To make a theme of moralizing art ; 
And oh ! too near, too dear, unto the rhymer's 
heart. 

Light thief of pleasure, I could wish thee ill. 

To find so sweet a sympathy of tears; 
As one would crush a laughing daffodil 

In fading finger, palsied by the years. 
And die in such fair company that death 

Upon the wing 
Of some rich dream might pluck the withered breath 

From the faint lips, and hush the chimes that ring 

With time-cracked dusty throat and tuneless rea- 
soning. 

Alas! frail child of Spring's young motherhood, 

Thou art ill-flavored nourishment for death ; 

Rather the rich and summer-ripened food 

Of joy's red lips — and yet, if thy swift breath 
63 



Must still confess a ceasing, let there be 

For thy lone bier 
Warm-tinted buds in evening revelry, 

And high-piled petals, making odorous cheer 
In death's dim banquet halls when thy pale ghost 
draws near. 

Farther among the flowers thy beauties fade, 

Leaving no epitaph of echoes, nor 
One memory of glory. Hadst thou stayed, 

Thy fettered joy had sunken into awe, 
For lovely things are things most mutable ; 

And oh ! 'tis death 
Whose lips are fixed and frozen, and even full 

Of wormy silence, where the panting breath 

Is hushed, as though for thee the dumb ear lis- 
teneth. 

Ah me ! Mine eyes play tempter to my tongue ! 

My tongue breeds cankered warfare in my heart; 
My heart is but a purple song unsung. 

Save in the pathos of a minor part, 
Whose sweeter chords are clogged with aching clay: 

And yet, like thee, 
I dream within a dome of summer day, 

And lap the milk of buds, until I flee, 

A pilgrim of the eternal, in thy company. 
March, 1889. 

64 



THE LEGEND OF THE LOTUS FLOWER. 

[Published in Oiicc a Weck.'X 

IN bloomy thickets where young hyacinths blow, 
Where dreams the dullard bee, even while he 
sips 
Hymettean sweetness from the chaliced flow 
Of myriad blossoms, where the tall oaks grow 

In mossen dotage, Lotus lay, with lips 
That taught each bud an eloquence 
It could not echo, — lips whose red suspense 
Bent low the listening ear with raptured reverence. 

Pale thought and pilgrim fancies wandered o'er 

The blue- veined tracery of lidded eyes; 
And whispering sleep bent heavy-kneed before 
Her forest couch, and muttered drowsy lore, 

Soft cadences, and far-heard melodies. 
Until her lengthy breathing blent 
With laggard dreams, in restful measurement 
Of droning leaves and flowers that mouthed their 
own content. 
5 65 



Then purple-lipped Priapus chanced to pass, 
In quest of some bright-eyed Bacchante; there 

He paused in listening quiet, and, alas! 

He saw sweet Lotus in the golden grass, 
And kissed her lips again to wakeful care. 

She fled to oaken solitudes 

Where but the music-throated thrush intrudes 

With shrill-tongued reveille and twilight interludes. 

But to the tongueless silence of each spot 
Priapus came in wine-begotten wrath ; 
And when he found her in a weedy plot 
Of tangled water-side, where willows blot 
The mottled tracery of woodland path, 
Again sweet Lotus fled away: 
And through the wave Priapus saw a ray 
Of sunny-tinted hair grow dank and muddy-gray. 

Oh! where is she? Oh! where hath Lotus fled? 

In what green-lintelled home doth she dream on, 
With pale anemone about her head, 
Till buds have grown to flowers within her bed, 

And garnered seeds have made their petals wan? 
Is there no purple-chaliced tear 
In yonder violet-bed, to mark the bier 
Of one whose eyes are shut to dream away the 
year? 

66 



Oh! there, where waters sleep, sweet Lotus lies. 

And, margining the deep with dimpled breast, 

She turns the petalled pathos of her eyes 

Toward the infinite ; and in the skies 

Her sprite is tented by the wings of rest. 

Priapus found Bacchante in the shade 

Of mossy eaves, and there beside the maid 

An amber-hearted amphora was laid. 

67 



AN ANSWER TO A PROPOSAL. 



THERE'S a little myrtle alley 
Where the birds sing musically, 
Answering the forlorn shiver 
Of the rushes in the river 
Which you see, through trunk and branches, 
Flowing on by twenty ranches, 
And the blue sky bent above it, 
With the blue hills almost of it. 
Here her hammock had been swung, 
And her small guitar was flung 
Like her second self, v/ithin it. 
Saying: " She has gone a minute 
For some knick-knack" — so I waited 
Till the gate-hinge creaked and grated, 
And she came toward me, singing. 
Arms akimbo, sideways swinging. 
With a sprig of myrtle netted 

In the spun gold of her tresses. 
No Bacchante — satyr-petted. 

Lilting all her heart confesses, 
68 



Ev^er seemed so joy-inspiring! 

No nun, hushed, or saint- fatiguing, 
Cold heart's ashes vainly firing 

Had e'er face with such a leaguing 
Of all sanctities — yet human 
" Prima-facie" — was this woman. 

II. 

Seeing me, she started, 

Singing lips half-parted 

Like a shell, but oh! the 

Greeting that flows through the 

Scarlet orifice is 

Scarce the sound of kisses ! 

Said I, then : " Forever, 

Speak the now or never 

Of my soul ! thine Alpha 

And Omega shall for 

Me be final. Sit, then; 

Due deliberation 

Fits the judge's station ; " 

And my lips I bit then 

Till a tiny trickling 

Fell carnation, tickling 

Chin and neck a little. 

What cared I a tittle, 

When the rapt suspense 

Of a fine sixth sense 

Stood as harp-string tense? 
69 



III. 
"So," she said, "you love me; well, then, 

I would ask you too a question, 
Very easily answered : Tell, then — 

Tell me, after due digestion 
Of the query's meaning, would you 

Mean by any chance that merely 
You wished to be my husband? This is 

Something touching me more nearly 
Than a thousand idle kisses ! 

For I'll be the wife of no man! 

Yet I own myself a woman. 
Feeling for you some affection, 

Which would fly if you consented 
To be merely the election 

Of a woman. " 

" Be contented 

Yet there's still a way." I said then, 

" Hope is not entirely dead then — 

Split the difference. " 

So I won her; 

God's wide blessing rest upon her! 
70 



MOON AND ROCKS. 

A SONNET. 

H ! tender siren of the star-swept night, 
Eternal shepherdess of unshorn flocks ! 
The awful void of thy cold sheep-fold mocks 
This bleating thought of thine unthought delight. 

Thy golden bosom pillowed on the height 

Of yon slow-paling cloud, and thy long locks, 
Cooling the sun-caught fever of these rocks 

Where I have fled the world's unkind despite. 

Breed bitter discord in the time-built truce 
Of shackled spirit and beleaguered clay, 

Whose hot artillery of tears reduce 

That proud melodious citadel, and slay 

Its joyous soldiery, that else would march 

Like seried stars in thine eternal arch. 

March 15, 1890. 

71 



CHANT DE NUIT. 

ST. AUGUSTINE. 

LAND and sea and sky are tongueless; 
Hear the waters musically 
Sigh like love-birds, heard, yet songless, 

In a myrtle alley! 
Earth is wrinkled, old and gray, 

Scarred and seared by self-dissection; 
God himself hath passed away 
In tongue-tied creed, and pious fray, 
And brotherly correction. 

'Nita, where the moonbeams fall 

O'er pale waters musically, 
Calling her as love-birds call 

In yonder myrtle alley — 
Gave her word to meet me here. 

Promised to bring kisses: 
Where can 'Nita be then, where? 
Or do her light feet fear to dare 

A night of dreams as this is? 

72 



'Nita is all ' Nita now, — 

Love, all love, in love's each sally, 
Witless as a love-bird's vow 

In yonder myrtle alley. 
Mighty in her ignorance. 

And wise in very lack of learning, — 
God forbid the luckless chance 
That ruins sinless circumstance 

With sinful self-discerning! 

Go manufacture sin and halter! 

Pay for priests to keep the tally! 
God, who made, alone can alter 

Yonder myrtle alley ! 
Human sins, nine times in ten. 

Were sins alone to those who named them: 
And half the world were sinless men, 
Until the glorious moment when 
The other half reclaimed them. 

And 'Nita, dark-eyed 'Nita knows 

Herself no more intrinsically, 
Than the love-bird, or a rose 

In a myrtle alley. 
So, I love her, and again 

May God forbid that modern learning 

Teacheth her to know, and strain 

Her heart-strings, searching for the pain 

That comes of self-discerning! 
September 19, iSgo. 

73 



ERGO SUM. 

LINES UPON THE SEASHORE. 

THE sea leaps to my feet, and dies 
Like morning dreams in open eyes, 
When renovated consciousness 
Forgets what sleepless hours confess. 
The sky is laden, and the swift 
Wind-battered clouds in remnants drift 
To catch the sun-beams, gem by gem, 
In dying daylight's diadem. 

O God! To be, and not to be! 
To live, and feel, and not to think ! 

To see all sights that are to see, 

All beauty and all purity. 
To disconnect them, link by link, 

Into the dreams that linger on 

The vanguard of oblivion ' 
And this is what those clouds are ; I 

Am but the clod that thinks of them : 
Like muddy pools whose ripples dye 
Themselves with every depth of sky 

That trembles o'er the brinks of them. 
74 



Man hath said that God is not, 

Unless he be a Mind, a Soul ; 
'^"XV) ^"Tf^'i — call it what 

You will — to me it is the whole 
Circumference of misery, 

Specification of our clay, 
This " Ergo Sum," this sad " to be," 

This power to think ! — and so, to say 
"I am;" — because I cannot be 

The thing- I wish, the thing I dream. 
The thing of which I envy thee. 
Oh ! sea-born mist, and sky-born sea. 
Thou pool with lily coronet. 

Thy music, thou eternal stream, 
Where, flower-hedged, thy waters fret, 
Whose ripple lips are never dumb. 
Although they say not " Ergo Sum. " 

The sun is set, the sky hath met 
The waters in that veil of jet 
That curtains their communion ; I 

Stand ankle-deep and know it not ; 
For, after all, though ripples die 

Upon the sands, yet is the spot 
In some kind held in simple fee 

For those that follow. Still the why 
And wherefore is not known to me. 
And yet I think if I could be 
A link in God's totality — 
75 



Unsheathed of fleshly circumstance, 
Nor demarcated by the touch 

Of knowledge or of ignorance: 
A total nothing, part of much, 

Such as these clouds are, I should then 
Feel no Promethean impotence. 
Nor seek the " wherefore" or the " whence" 

Of sea and sky, of gods and men ; 
But, like a music which divides 
And is but one with many sides 

In interlinking harmony. 

Although I could not think, and sigh, 

And feel, and think I could not be. 

Yet I should know unconsciously 
That many, many-tongued reply 
Which solveth man's coeval "why!" 
1S90. 

76 



THE GLOV/-WORM. 

THINK you we are what we think we are 
In the clay? 
Can a glow-worm think himself a star, 

As they say? 
Seeing his own shadow still a worm 

In his glow, 
Watching his long shadow twist and squirm. 

Can he know 
'Tis his own light shadows forth his clay 

In the night? 
Pointing out his lean and wormy way? 

His own light? 
Knew he this, would he be wormy still? 

Squirm and twist? 
Knew we this, would life still lead up hill 

In the mist? 
Knew we this, would strength fail in our need? 

Soul bear scars? 

Is the worm's fire not the self-same breed 

As the star's? 
December 15, 1890. 

77 



N 



NIGHT. 

CHRISTMAS, 1890. 

OW the white hollow of the day's spread wings 
Sinks rippling into darkness, and is gone ! 



The long night's brooding calm oppresses me. 
The ache of no sound, and the moon's cold white; 
The blanched earth and the sky hung over it, 
Swelling with thunder and quite bare of stars; 
Communion of dumb trees and shuddering winds; 
The frozen baldness of cathedral spires; 
The cold sea, baring cheek and bosom to 
The dead moon, and, for love of her faint kiss, 
Still shoreward stumbline in the dark forever! 



78 



TO A LIVING PREACHER OF INFIDELITY. 

TO be a rebel is a noble thing ; 
Bnt thou art but a slave, who loves his chains, 
Nor knows the name of freedom, yet would fling 

His envious sneer upon all that disdains 
His foul corruption. Thou wouldst plant thy sting 
And sully with thy heart's corroding stains 
All things that are yet fair, to glory in thy pains. 

Hath yonder purpling ocean no mute prayer 
For hearts like thine? Can thy polluted eyes 

Count the bright stars, the high, the darkly fair, 
And lie unto thy lips, till they despise 

That which they cannot lisp? Alas! despair 
Must teach thy heart the lesson it defies. 
And sing thy tuneless ear a pasan from the skies. 

Oh ! tell us. Glory, who hath made thy creed. 
Which countless lips count o'er in pale unrest. 

While the frail heart's vain hope and longing feed 
The worm thou hast engendered ; what vain jest 

Tempts thee to deck the dull and soulless weed 

79 



With honor's trappings and a gaudy crest, 
While many a violet dies unseen in some green 
nest? 

Alas ! how hast thou made a sport of one 
Who cannot see the path his footsteps tread, 

But staggers on till his brief day is done. 

With piteous mirth — from his own weakness fed — 

Upon those lips whose laughter cannot shun 

The shadow of the end, where all are led 

To take a nameless place among the nameless dead ! 
80 



THE UNSEEN SINGER. 

I Y all my soul must be 
When death devours me, 
Worn limb from limb and weary bone from bone, 
I never dreamed or thought 
That all the music taught 
By God to clay could equal thine alone ! 

Lost there among the leaves, 

Like some mad thought that heaves 
The coils and knotted tangles of the brain. 

The fire of thine intense 

Life conquers soul and sense, 
Until to see thee singing were a pain ; 

To see, and so to crush 

Imagination's rush 
Of dreams that bear thee starward through the night ; 

To see, and so to say : 

" God writes a psalm in clay!" 
For faith in God himself would die at sight! 
6 8i 



But when the air's a-tremble 

With singings that assemble 
All shapeless ecstasies and visions vain, 

The sweep of our own wings, 

In seeking him that sings. 
Makes angels of us in doubt's passing pain! 

And so thou art a type 

Of God, whose song is ripe 
For all men, and, to find the singer, we 

Have risen from the mire, 

Are what we are, and higher 
Must wander on, until we cease to be ! 

For if the clearest eyes 

That ever read the skies 
In fullest vision pictured God to men. 

The end of things Vv^ould be : 

The mire cries " man" for me 
When doubts are solved and peace hath come again. 

This peace and death are one — 

This longing after none 
Of those impossibles that hang above 

The utmost grasp of us — 

The fruit of Tantalus, 
Whose swaying shadow is our faith and love! 

S2 



Thou dost not sing such peace ! 

That sinking and increase — 
That silence now, that rush of music then — 

Are not the drowsy flow 

Of lips that murmur " Go, 
Disturb us not, we wish to sleep again!" 

So joy and sadness both, 
Though sadness something loath, 
Are mates for life whose mad hopes never cease ; 
But God, whose glory dies 
Each evening in the skies — 
'Tis He alone that is, and must be, Peace. 
January, 1891. 

83 



THE SUICIDE. 

In ancient Mexico it was the custom to gratify every whim 
and caprice of a living sacrifice during the year previous to 
his immolation. 

YE whose fair task it is to spill my blood, 
To make this clay a wormy legacy 
Unto the future, hear me for a space; 
For in the year ye gave me to grow fat 
In idleness and kisses, I have learned 
Much wisdom and more patience. On the whole, 
The death ye grant is all that I could be 
Still curious concerning — most cold death. 
Most clotted, wormy, macerated death — 
The thing I know not — I, whose cheek is warm 
With fever; I, whose eyes were ever wont 
To emulate that poor unstable star 
Whose every breath is brightly changeable ! 

If ye remember, for the first two moons 
I asked for music, wine, and dancing-girls ; 
Loose-tongued companions, who made wings for 

time, 
That could not lift his great unwieldy bulk 

84 



From my crushed head and heart. Lo! sleep forsook 

My eyes, and then 'twas, first, I thought of death. 

I paced upon the earth-commanding brow 

Of yon great temple, till I saw the dawn 

Grow broader, like a smile upon the lips 

Of some loved woman; and the pale shy stars 

Were veiled and interknitted by their own 

Slow golden overflow ; and all was still 

In an unbreathing silence, as though death 

Had hushed the haunting echoes of the day, 

And himself slept in his own dreamlessness. 

And there I shook the breath of wine from me, 

The kisses and love-tales that rotted in 

My fore-doomed heart; and when the sun arose 

I slept like one that hath been cast ashore 

On the warm golden sands to find a couch — 

And peace unutterable. From that time 

I've dwelt within the vast and shadowed depths 

Of forest-deserts ; and men think me mad. 

One W'hora anticipation weighed upon. 

For whom dreams made sleep madness, till the brain 

Awoke no more ; and partly they were right : 

For who hath smiled on death, as I do now, 

Nor thought with other men. . . . Lo! I am mad, 

If madness is to think athwart the time ; 

To build one's temporal environments 

Of timeless meditation and to pass 

To old age in no age ! 

85 



Men come and go 
And think not whence they come, nor where they go: 
But measure time by the sun, moon, and stars, 
To know themselves, and individualize 
Their little epoch. Men of finer stuff- 
Men who construct a personality 
Of light and thought and spirit ; men who build 
Upon this base and pedestal of clay 
A fiery statue of their own intense 
And lightning-like vitality — 'tis these 
Whose pulsing life out-wrestles death, and passes 
Into that newer tenement, and fills 
Its fibrous speculation with a fire 
That burns forever. 

Ye who walk upon 
The path your fathers trod, and see no deep 
And awful vistas stretched upon each side 
Unto the dim horizon which is God — 
Ye find a grave dug at the farther end. 
And there ye stop, and sleep, and feed young worms 
That live as ye have lived, to green old age, 
And die as 5-e will die. Yet ye set up 
A god to serve who serveth also you, 
Bends to your lips to catch the impure breath 
That floats in poisonous vapors from the earth 
And breeds night-gendered fungi, and soft toads, 
Slime-vestured types of twice ten thousand prayers; 
And from the tongue of this divinity 

86 



Ye draw eternal life, as I would pluck 
A reed, and breathe into its hollow heart 
And find the music I was fondest of — 
Be it a hymn or drinking-song ! 

What say ye, 
The time is come for sacrifice? 

Well, well! 
Stay, while I look once more upon the sky, 
So charactered and so unreadable. 
So full of music and sweet tongueless sounds, 
So full of perfume, when the summer- winds 
Drink the buds dry. Stay, while I gaze again 
Upon my refuge : — the quiet assemblages 
Of mossy-bearded centenarians, 
That seem to take me with their long green arms 
And call me to the feet of them, to lie 
And dream sweet things among the berried shrubs 
That slipper their worn feet. Of such a shrub, 
That which hangs low with purple treasury 
Of lush large berries, I did eat my fill, 
Pressing their bursting forms upon my tongue 
And sucking out the bitter juice of them. 
And saying: Death, if thou canst lurk within 
Full-fleshed vitality ; if thou art thus 
A guest in the whispering hostelry of life ; 
There is in thee some music which we hear not, 
Some sweet potentiality of that 
Which is not desolation and despair. 

87 



I find no poison in so fair a dish 
Upon God's table — so I sup with Him, 
And He is host ; and I thus bow to Him — 
And — ye are fading from me. . . . 

Pull that rug 
To my numb feet, that I may rest a space, 
For I can look upon the sun unblinded — 
So dim mine eyes are! 

Are ye ready, then? 

I also . . . but go with you — not to-day. 

8S 



MEMORIES. 



A STUDY IN E MINOR. 



HEAVENS ! Do you call this Easter-love, when 
the air 
Hangs leaden-like with perfume? When the sky 
Gathers her flock of moon-deserted stars 
Into a haze of golden ether? 

Listen ! 
That faint full monotone of breakers, dying 
In sighs upon the beach 

The laughing leap 
Of little star-lit waves upon the feet 
Of Marco's battlements, these second me 
And cry "Amen" to my poor lip-worn prayer. 
Forget the unlovely resolution which 
Lurks like a baffling lump of poison in 
Thy life's full cup! Oh, be a child of all 
The years that have been and are yet to be! 
To crown eternity with love — this is 
Thy mission, and the convent yonder, 



Where the star-echoes sleep like children dreaming 

Upon the cool dome of a spring-dug grave, 

Is full of bones that never knew the flesh, 

Yet might have been as fair as thou art now. 

With summer in the cheek, the quickening essence 

Of night in their deep eyes, and music in 

The very sighs of them, as sweet as that 

Which seemeth like assent upon thy lips, 

Now, even now! . . . 

That "yes" means life to me. 

And love, and . . . 

Hush! What mellow choir is there? 

The hymn? Ah! yes, the Easter hymn . . . and 

listen 

How the notes blend, as if an alchemy 

Made the poor dross of many tongues and hearts 

A golden unity of music! What? 

Weeping? Yes, I too feel the tears in that 

" Santa Maria," and the rest of it; 

A fallacy, sung on a night like this. 

Hath more conviction in it than the muttered 

Truths of . . . 

What? You say "farewell" to me? 

And a few harmonies have blotted out 

That "yes" of thine? the misbegotten child 

Of love and reason? 

Go, then — leave me here 

Like some foul toad that sits among the fens 

90 



And brews green poison ! Seek some butterfly 
As thou art, sick with honey that ferments 
In every summer air that breathes on it! 

O God! That music hath o'er-brimmed mine eyes, 
Yet is but music . . , and I am alone. 

91 



MARCO MIALE. 

MARCO MIALE— cardinal— stood forth, 
Hushing the mingled voices with "Amen!" 
To-day's long task is finished, for the sun 
Rims the dim west with glory. Hush ! one — two — 
There's the boom . . . boom ... of the Angelus! 

Enough 
Of whys and wherefores, and that matter of 
The new-built monastery, nestling far 
Among the purple Euganean hills — 
And still unpaid for; God's time is not ours. 
See, Matteo lays the board, there, where the rock 
Bears that alcove above the pine-tree tops. 
Look at the broad blue shadows of the night 
Resting among the vineyards ! Those white spots 
Are dwelling-places, and that darker patch 
Is a broad field of uncut grain ; but there. 
Away there, where the blue-black hills shoot up 
Into the golden sky — I see the lake. 
Bearing the last slant shaft of fire that breaks 
The mist through . . and, d'ye know, I've seen a 
soul 

Not unlike this. First, its totality 

92 



Was God — just as the unseen all of this 

Is the whole world. Then there were mists that 

hung 
Over its fields of cut and uncut grain; 
And then death came, as night comes to us now, 
Moulding the stiffening lips into a smile. 

Too curious, I fear, too curious — 

What is't to you what thoughts I thought, or where 

I wandered? Yet, sit nearer, and the tale 

Shall, as you wish, be told you, then. A woman? 

A woman, say you? Ay, it was a woman! 

And yet why should I trust the thing to you, 

To whom, as soldier of our God, that love 

I think of is an alien? 

I? Hear, then. 
Priest as I am, I felt, and did not die ! 
Then my lips clinched in some fierce sense of fear, 
And far beneath me in unmeasured depths 
A faint light broke, like music, palpitant. 
You are well out of it, for this same love 
Is neither of the spirit nor the flesh,' 
Yet hath an edge for either ; and the day. 
In the white hush of noontide, or when night 
Plays with the slow feet of the twilight — night, 
Checked by the moon's mild fire, and full of music 
Such as the leaves make when the winds pass by — 
Both cease to be in love's fierce period; 

93 



Both premises to one conclusion — 
In my case being negative — and that 
Necessitates, you recollect, despair! 

Since Christ died, fifteen hundred and two score, 
'Twas then she died, too, and I cried " Amen!" 
Folded my hands, and now am cardinal. 

We'll sup 
With the last sunlight shooting through the wine ; 
And that brings back to me a matter heard 
Long, long ago in fanciful Provence, 
The fruit of a woman's lips, that sank in the end 
From riddles into music. Thus it was . . . 

There was a little balcony that hung 

In the great quiet night over the moonlit sea. 

And she came there for solitude, and brought 

Her lute along, and as she sat she sang; 

And he half caught the music, and approached 

Unthinkingly, not knowing who it was ; 

And thus the words came throbbingly to him : 

There is a dead hope in my heart. 

Like a dead star in the sky. 
" God's light falls on it day by day; 
Thank God there's a star in Heaven," men say, 

" Whose fires will never die! " 
And it makes me weep, for the thing is dead, 
And men's praise is but gall to me ; 
94 



And yet God's light is better by far 

Than the burned-out fires of that dull dead star. 

Quoth Bishop Rizzio, " I do cry Amen 

To your conclusions. Faithfully have you, 

My brother, caught the fire of Sinai!" 

"Well, are you weary? Yet one question still 

I ask you, as in sport, to make you smile. 

And give a sweet taste to your dreams to-night. 

What single portion of our corporal being, 

The earthly sheath of our divinity. 

Say you, hath been the firmest true support. 

The instrument and ally of ourselves. 

The path-constructor to eternal rest? 

"This," cried Carola, "this firm hand of mine. 

Which like a greater Atlas doth hold up 

A greater world, in bearing God's sweet flesh 

In reverent sacrament!" 

And Maffio cried : 
" Amen ! well spoken. Yet this tongue of mine. 
Swaying the mighty masses, as the moon 
Calls to the stubborn sea-waves, hath it not 
Gained my poor soul a better surety 
Of life than fleshly functioner can give? " 

And Timon cried : " Thy tongue is eloquent, 
O Maffio, consigning to God's service 
The honey of old Hybla ; yet these feet, 

95 



Scarred by the flints of Palestine, have thrice 

Borne me to God~s sweet sepulchre, and so 

Thrice borne me nearer God's three-seated throne!" 

Cried Rizzio, in conclusion unto them: 

" My dim and tattered eyes have borne me thrice 

Three thousand times to God in His sweet book; 

And though I lose hands, feet, and tongue, yet I 

Knock louder than you all at His shut door, 

Out-bristling lions in my confidence, 

My eyes the barristers in my defence! " 

" Well ! well !" they cried, and so there came a pause. 
" Ho, there!" cried Maffio to an ancient monk. 
Whose task it was to heap upon the board 
The evening meal. His was no sinecure 
In life's allotments, and he had grown old. 
And had become no wiser. " So," cried Maffio, 
" And you, good brother ! Say you, hands or feet, 
Dim eyes or palsied tongue, have guided you 
Nearer to God, and made you confident?" 
And he was quick abashed at the demand 
From so much purple-plushed magnificence; 
So his old tongue refused to favor him 
Till Maffio cried: "Speak, dotard!" 

When he spoke. 

And answered: 

" Please your reverence, my knees.' 

96 



TIMOLEON'S LOVE. 

CLEON, the sculptor, stood, one arm about 
The shoulders of his daughter Cynthia, 
One weary elbow resting on a block 
Of jagged marble, while upon his hand 
Leant his white brow, whose wrinkled charactry 
Spelt out the epitaph of youth and joy. 
She was the full-kept promise of his love ; 
Her red lips lending eloquence to words 
More harsh than heavy discord, and her eyes 
Indorsing each sweet promise of her lips, 
Too bright in their own matter to be dimmed 
By trifling comparison of stars. 
Too dark in their own night to be out-nighted 
By the most ebon moodiness of night, 
When she hath bid the moon go hide herself 
In some dank dungeon of unwholesome mists. 
" Thou art not like thyself, my father ! Say 
What canker-worm hath fed upon thy peace? 
What caitiff thought hath been the self-made guest 
Of thy too hospitable heart, and turned 
Upon its host with cold ingratitude?" 
7 97 



"Alas! " said Cleon, "this same stubborn stone 
Hath locked that thought within its milky keep! 
For young Timoleon, that youth who lives 
To seek coy wisdom, burning out his eyes 
Like flickering torches in the bootless search, 
Timoleon hath commissioned me to carve 
A statue of that thing which he calls 'truth;' 
Hath given direction that this Truth shall be 
In likeness of a long-interred corpse, 
With worm-entunnelled eyes, and smiling jaws 
That smile, in that they lack their silent lips 
To smile with. Further, that the pedestal 
Be skulls, piled up into a pyramid : 
And yonder stands the pedestal of skulls, 
Beneath the silk deceit of that pale curtain. 
That droops in long sad folds, as if to weep 
Its sickly office. 

But this stone 
Doth still refuse the manufacturing 
Of that which is to be erected there ; 
Yet young Timoleon hath builded him 
A subterranean study, marble-roofed, 
And hung with sweet medicinable lamps, 
Where solitude doth make a silent third 
To wisdom and her sateless neophyte; 
And there he purposes to place the thing 
To be presiding spirit, sweet familiar 
To his most sad, lugubrious visions." 

08 



" Sweet father, I have been thine only child, 
And so thrown much with thee in my brief years 
Of meted time ; and thus I do profess 
Limited skill of some sort in thine art, 
Got more from observation than aught else; 
Give me^ then, the commission of this task, 
And I will lay a wager with old Death 
That I v/ill work more grisly work than he, 
And he give up his trade in sheer despite! 
For I will cut the marble into shape 
At which the frighted chisel will grow dull, 
And be unwilling minister to hands 
That force it to so chill a task!" 

" So be it ! 
For my part," said old Cleon, " I have done 
With this phantasmagoria of death — 
And for the long space of a year will I 
Conquer no form but leaping water-nymph 
And smiling hamadryad! So, farewell 
To Truth, if Truth be such as he hath said." 
"Then tell Timoleon," said sweet Cynthia, 
" That on the morrow, in his quiet nest. 
Wilt thou set up his scare-crow Truth, to fright 
Henceforth all tender falsehoods and gilt lies 
From his sweet harvest of acquirements. " 
"What, by to-morrow even?" 

"Ay," she replies. 
" To limn out Beauty's soft seductiveness 

99 



Might take a longer time, but to give form 
To some foul nightmare such as all have felt 
In sleep -distorted moments, what is that 
But recklessness of finer tone and touch? 
As one would dash a passion-driven hand 
Upon a harp's responsive strings, and wake 
A fiend in that bright Paradise of sounds, 
Make discord of sweet possibilities. 
And blow up war in Music's brotherhood!" 

Timoleon, on the morrow, took his way 

To his new dwelling, as the sun went down, 

Stripping of all their purple uniform 

His soldiery of clouds, until they looked 

Quite woe-begone, like self-stung renegades 

That had gone over to advancing night. 

Timoleon 's brow was shaded o'er with cares 

Which hung like murky mists upon the face 

Of some fair mountain-pool, and his damp locks 

Lay mutinously heaped upon his head. 

Save one or tv/o, which fell about his eyes 

Like long rich grasses o'er twin springs of thought, 

Peering into their calm transparency, 

And ruffling that calmness with a kiss. 

In the quiet midst of self-reposing gloom 
Stood the pale mimic of deceiving Truth. 
Sweet Cynthia herself stood, pedestalled 



By skulls, and thereby seemed more softly fair, 

In the stern concord of antithesis. 

For she did nourish love of this poor child 

Who cried out for a bauble ; knowing not 

That love of wide-spread popularity, 

To be the theme for gaping in a crowd, 

Is oft mistook for most divine resolve; 

And so doth pave the highway unto hell. 

Upon whose every stone is writ " I will," 

Until the multiplied affirmative 

Hath negatived itself and damned the speaker. 

Timoleon stood, as though in mimicry 

Of purblind ignorance, who comes upon 

The thing he sought, and knows it not; then said; 

" Ha! Cleon hath mistook my drift most sadly — 

For this poor manufacture of his brain 

Hath more the posture and self-confidence 

Of sophistry, — that pretty cloak of lies; 

And, in the very climax of deceit. 

He hath here wedded color unto form, 

And stained the virgin marble with a taint 

Of worm-predestined nature. Oh! alas! 

Scale off the painted richness of a cheek — 

What have we but the very commonplace 

Of dust and creaking sinews, that grow stiff 

And weary of their several tasks so soon? 

Tear off the alleviating tapestry 



That doth hang o'er the eyes — what have we then 

But staring- pupils in a sea of white, 

Looking like some sweet fruit that hath been plucked 

From its o'er-sheltering leaves, and hung aloft 

In bald desertion? All things so deceive us?" 

" 'Tis thou that art deceived," cried Cynthia, 

" Because lush damask lies upon a cheek — 

Yet knewest me not — but bone doth lie beneath. 

Oh! are the myriad pearly diadems 

That lie within the shine of yonder sea 

To be spread out in auction to thine eyes. 

Because thou hast cried ' liar ' to the sea? 

Poor worm, that hath mistook its daily food, 

Feeding on bitter aloes, till all things 

Did sting its palate with the memory 

Of its diurnal nourishment! Poor toad 

That hath sucked poison in its native fens. 

Until the stars stagnate within their spheres 

To his foul horned eyes! " 

" Sweet lecturer! " 
Cried out Timoleon, " w^ere I a toad 
I had not thought thee but a marble dream ! 
Were I a worm, I'd lay me at thy feet, 
And starve upon the chances of thy death, 
To feast upon thy treasures! As I am, 
I can but offer thee a pupil who 
Hath learnt his lesson, and but asks thy leave 
To tell it in thine ear. 



Sit we upon 
These skulls, that love therefore be sweeter yet 
Upon so sour a camping-place. Just so. 
Wilt thou then be addition to m}' creed, 
Changing in that addition all before? 
Yet say not in gross words, that ill conform 
With these most silent witnesses, but turn, 
As they to one another — be our eyes 
Commissioners to make that treaty good 
Of which my lips make purport unto thine. 
So yield thee, while I flatter these poor arms 
That they at last have grasped and circled Truth." 

i88g. 

103 



FAREWELL VERSES. 



TO 



OH ! would that we could pierce the gloom 
That clouds the pathway to the tomb, 
And mark the course our feet must tread 
Before they rest among the dead ; 
And where we smile, and where we weep ; 
And where we dream, in waking sleep. 
Before we sleep upon the shore 
Where slumberers dream and wake no more! 
Alas! from life's storm-beaten crest 
We fix our eyes upon the west, 
Where our own sun must one day set. 
Though pausing in the zenith yet, 
But see no path amid the mist, 
No shore by distant ocean kissed ; 
No limit to that mortal thing 
Whose hourly Icnell our heart-beats ring; 
No silence for that whispered song 

Whose music cannot whisper long; 
104 



No rest for that, whose restless sigh 

Proclaims it but a thing to die. 

Yet there is still an echo borne, 

And still we catch a note forlorn — 

A whisper from that lone retreat 

Where darkling shore and ocean meet ; 

And in red revelry and rout, 

When hearts have shut remembrance out, 

And souls have sought the loved caress 

Of one brief hour's forgetfulness, 

'Tis then, when we have turned our eyes 

From where the past in ashes lies, 

That cheeks are clammy with the spray 

That dashes palsied time away, 

And curls about the panting heart. 

My friend, all human souls must part; 
The echo of our being's knell 
Is borne upon that word " Farewell." 
But, as the ocean glimmers yet 
When yonder paling moon hath set, 
And as the clouds still blush with day, 
Though twilight long hath passed away; 
So love and friendship, though they die 
Yet live, if there be but one sigh 
To catch the light still feebly shed, 
And bear the impress of the dead. 
I too have felt ambition's sting 
105 



When crushed by her enfeebled wing ; 
Yet, tempted still, with eagle eye 
She searches glory's fading sky, 
And marks the star she cannot gain — 
Then dies but to be born again. 
I too have breathed the galling sigh 
Of time-enshackled misery, 
And felt my spirit many a day 
Half turn within its grave of clay, 
And, maddened by the numbed pain, 
Fall fainting into sleep again ! 

Yet, , when we say farewell, 

'Tis mine, and mine alone to tell 

To sorrow's ear my loss ; to thee 

The meed of human prophecy. 

Thy foot is where mine cannot stand, 

Upon no shifting path of sand, 

Nor wandering on the treacherous shore 

Of that which thou can'st ne'er bridge o'er. 

Thy faith is what mine cannot be. 

Thy spirit in its sphere is free. 

Rebellious curses cannot blight 

Thy lips, nor dark despair alight 

Upon the temple of thy creed. 

My friend, may thy stanch spirit speed 

Thy footsteps on, and like a star 
io6 



Whose silvered breath is borne out far, 
May that success which breathes in thee 
Bear thy reflected light to me, 
And write, like old Belshazzar's doom, 
A " Pax Vobiscum" on my tomb! 

SEWANEE, 1888. 

107 



APPENDIX. 



FAREWELL ADDRESS TO AN OLD 
COATEE.* 

[Written for Undergraduates' Day, '87, University of the 
South, Sewanee, Tenn.J 

FAREWELL, Old Coat, farewell forever, 
And yet 'tis hard that we must part; 
For we've been comrades long together, 
Breast to breast, and heart to heart. 

We have braved, all uncomplaining, 

Summer sun and wintry blast ; 
Now, Old Coat, thy star is waning, 

And we two must part at last. 

With glory thou wast once invested; 

So, old friend, it might be still. 
Had not we two marched together 

Many an hour of "extra drill." 

« This poem, immature as it is, finds a fitting place in an 
appendix because of its association with the poet's Alma 
Mater, and the warm requests of many of his college friends 
to have it put m print. — Ed. 

109 



There, Old Coat, 'twas first we quarrelled, • 
The sun was hot, you recollect; 

And I used some strong expressions 
That hurt your pride and self-respect. 

So you made it hotter for me, 

And when the extra drill was o'er, 

I tore thee ofif, old friend, and threw thee 
In the dust upon the floor. 

But we made it up, old comrade, 

At the next " Battalion Hop," 
Where all night we danced together, 

Till morning forced us both to stop. 

And fair hands lay on thy shoulder 

Just where the rusty rifle lay; 
With such " arms " as that, old comrade. 

We'd march "extras " every day! 

And we tripped a " double quick," 
Lightly to " Blue Danube's River; " 

Then we marched at "common time," 
Out where the silvery moonbeams quiver. 

We have many a recollection, 

You of me and I of you ; 

But we've promised to each other 

To be silent friends and true, 
no 



" Gown" will never sit as lightly 

As thou hast in days gone by, 
Dreams of glory with thee perish, 

Bright illusions with thee die. 

Sell thee, comrade? Sell thee? Never! 

Thou art scarcely worth a V ; 
While thou hast sweet recollections. 

Tender memories for me. 

So, Old Coat, farewell forever! 

We must bow to destiny ; 
Like true friends we've served together, 

Like true friends we'll say good-by. 

And I'll place thee in some corner. 

Safe from iconoclastic eye, 
Where thou canst count the dust of ages 

In oblivion's sanctity. 

Thou shall be a fitting pillow. 

Where memories of the past may sleep; 
Where the ghosts of by-gone " extras " 

At midnight hour may wake and weep. 

We have scarce a moment left us, 

My heart, old comrade, throbs thy knell; 

And thine, I know, is breaking also, 
Taps are sounding — Fare thee well ! 






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